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| The various developments of idolatry: worship of the heavenly bodies, the elements, natural objects, fabulous creatures, personified lusts, men living and dead. The case of Antinous, and of the deified Emperors.
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§9. The various developments of
idolatry: worship of the heavenly bodies, the elements, natural
objects, fabulous creatures, personified lusts, men living and dead.
The case of Antinous, and of the deified Emperors.
For now the understanding of mankind leaped
asunder from God; and going lower in their ideas and imaginations, they
gave the honour due to God first to the heaven and the sun and moon and
the stars, thinking them to be not only gods, but also the causes of
the other gods lower than themselves118
| 118 For the
following chapters Döllinger, ‘The Gentile and the
Jew,’, is a rich mine of illustration. The recently published
‘Manual of the History of Religions,’ by Prof. Chantepie de
la Saussaye (Eng. Tra. pub. by Longmans), summarises the best results
of recent research. | . Then, going yet
lower in their dark imaginations, they gave the name of gods to the
upper æther and the air and the things in the air. Next, advancing
further in evil, they came to celebrate as gods the elements and the
principles of which bodies are composed, heat and cold and dryness and
wetness. 2. But just as they who have fallen flat creep in the slime
like land-snails, so the most impious of mankind, having fallen lower
and lower from the idea of God, then set up as gods men, and the forms
of men, some still living, others even after their death. Moreover,
counselling and imagining worse things still, they transferred the
divine and supernatural name of God at last even to stones and stocks,
and creeping things both of land and water, and irrational wild beasts,
awarding to them every divine honour, and turning from the true and
only real God, the Father of Christ. 3. But would that even there the
audacity of these foolish men had stopped short, and that they had not
gone further yet in impious self-confusion. For to such a depth have
some fallen in their understanding, to such darkness of mind, that they
have even devised for themselves, and made gods of things that have no
existence at all, nor any place among things created. For mixing up the
rational with the irrational, and combining things unlike in nature,
they worship the result as gods, such as the dog-headed and
snake-headed and ass-headed gods among the Egyptians, and the
ram-headed Ammon among the Libyans. While others, dividing apart the
portions of men’s bodies, head, shoulder, hand, and foot, have
set up each as gods and deified them, as though their religion were not
satisfied with the whole body in its integrity. 4. But others,
straining impiety to the utmost, have deified the motive of the
invention of these things and of their own wickedness, namely, pleasure
and lust, and worship them, such as their Eros, and the Aphrodite at
Paphos. While some of them, as if vying with them in depravation, have
ventured to erect into gods their rulers or even their sons, either out
of honour for their princes, or from fear of their tyranny, such as the
Cretan Zeus, of such renown among them, and the Arcadian Hermes; and
among the Indians Dionysus, among the Egyptians Isis and Osiris and
Horus, and in our own time
Antinous, favourite of Hadrian, Emperor of the Romans, whom, although
men know he was a mere man, and not a respectable man, but on the
contrary, full of licentiousness, yet they worship for fear of him that
enjoined it. For Hadrian having come to sojourn in the land of Egypt,
when Antinous the minister of his pleasure died, ordered him to be
worshipped; being indeed himself in love with the youth even after his
death, but for all that offering a convincing exposure of himself, and
a proof against all idolatry, that it was discovered among men for no
other reason than by reason of the lust of them that imagined it.
According as the wisdom of God testifies beforehand when it says,
“The devising of idols was the beginning of fornication119
.” 5. And do not wonder, nor think what
we are saying hard to believe, inasmuch as it is not long since, even
if it be not still the case that the Roman Senate vote to those
emperors who have ever ruled them from the beginning, either all of
them, or such as they wish and decide, a place among the gods, and
decree them to be worshipped120
| 120 Constantine was the last Emperor officially deified (D.C.B., I.
649), but even Theodosius is raised to heaven by the courtly Claudian
Carm. de 111 Cons. Honor. 163 sqq.; cf. Gwatkin,
p. 54, note. | . For those to whom
they are hostile, they treat as enemies and call men, admitting their
real nature, while those who are popular with them they order to be
worshipped on account of their virtue, as though they had it in their
own power to make gods, though they are themselves men, and do not
profess to be other than mortal. 6. Whereas if they are to make gods,
they ought to be themselves gods; for that which makes must needs be
better than that which it makes, and he that judges is of necessity in
authority over him that is judged, while he that gives, at any rate
that which he has, confers a layout, just as, of course, every king, in
giving as a favour what he has to give, is greater and in a higher
position than those who receive. If then they decree whomsoever they
please to be gods, they ought first to be gods themselves. But the
strange thing is this, that they themselves by dying as men, expose the
falsehood of their own vote concerning those deified by them.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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